According to the technical specifications, Scythe ZIPANG fan rotates at 1000RPM generating 21dBA of noise and creating 51.82CFM airflow.

The fan is marked as DFS132512L and is made in China. It seems to be a very quiet fan, from our subjective impression.

The fan is attached to the heatsink with two wire clips. If you remove them you will see that there is a small groove along the sides of the heatsink intended for a 120x120x25mm fan that can also be installed on top of Scythe ZIPANG heatsink:

In this case it is important to point out that although the clips for a 120mm fan are not included with the cooler accessories, you can also use the default clips from the 140mm fan. Although they will bend oddly, when installed into the 120mm retention grooves. I would also like to mention that there are no shock-absorbing pads or stickers on the heatsink as well as on the fan, which could have reduced the level of generated noise even more by absorbing the fan vibrations. However, any overclocker can make such rubber pads on his/her own, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

There is a pretty large aluminum heatsink in the lower part of the cooler right above the cooler base and heatpipes:

It helps the heatpipes a little because it is also cooled with the airflow from the fan on top.

Unlike the most efficient Scythe cooler – the Infinity (Mugen), the heatpipes in the base of Scythe ZIPANG are practically not flattened at all:

Moreover, Scythe doesn’t ever use the same approach to heatpipes contact with the copper cooler base as Zalman, Thermalright and even Gigabyte. Namely, they do not place the heatpipes into specifically designed grooves in the base plate. No matter how you look at it, but just soldering (or even sticking) the round heatpipe to the flat surface of the base plate is indeed very simple and least labor-intensive approach, but it definitely is less efficient than placing the heatpipes into the grooves. It’s a pity Scythe loses a few degrees here…

The cooler base is covered with protective film that should be removed before installation:

The quality of the base finish and its evenness checked with a thermal compound imprint on the glass surface and the processor heat-spreader are ideal and will definitely satisfy even the most demanding overclocking fan:

By the way, the manufacturer claims that the cooler base is silver coated. We didn’t double-check this statement during our test session.